Day 19 - Guild of Helpers

I've banged off some more marker sets - only two more to go. So hopefully I can say that this is done the next time I post. My experiment with the power switches at the Pod 1 portal time was a bust - the power wouldn't stay on. I'm wondering if Payiferen, with it's swirl plates on the floor, may be more important. So, I'm going to try a similar experiment with all the power switches at the Payiferen portal time. I good time to try that looks like Wednesday at 20:23 KI time (10:23 pm EST).

A far more interesting thing happened anyway. Corbin, who had helped me when I lost my Great Zero link in the Nexus, had created an avatar called Helper2.0 because he needed to join my neighbourhood to do what was needed and didn't want to be deleted from his old neighbourhood. I had noticed that there was now a new neighbourhood, Helper2.0's Bevin. Corbin had soon made that Bevin private again, but it gave my an idea. Why not have a Helpers' Bevin with every member there named Helper. The purpose to help newbies would be obvious enough and helper's could even room city locations and obviously be there to lend a hand to anyone who wanted it.

I pitched the idea to Corbin and he loved it. We soon created the Guild of Helpers' of which myself (as Helper HC) Corbin (as Helper2.0) were it's first members. We weren't even finished setting things up when the first person arrived asking for help with one of the pod Ages. Obviously, this is going to work. We began discussing uniforms when someone else showed up named Tsunami. She wanted to be a helper too. She came back as Helper420 and joined. We then returned to discussing uniforms. We all had ideas but eventually settled on a simple, but recognizable, white shirt with yellow pants with each individual free to customize within those parameters. Things seem to already be up and going pretty well.

Corbin - aka: Helper2.0 - at Guild of Helpers'

While all this was going on, I noticed that the Metaphysical Club's Bevin had gone public again. I noticed this one about a week ago when I was earnestly shopping for a neighbourhood and put it on my contact again list. Unfortunately, it went private soon after. Needless to say, now seeing it public again, I scooted over there and was lucky enough to find one of its members, Garamoth, on line. I contacted him. We both had things to do but agreed to meet in a bit. Soon I had joined that neighbourhood too (this time as HCIsland).

The Metaphysical Club's Bevin advertises itself as strictly out-of-cavern. No in character stuff. Just people being together playing a game. Sounds good to me! Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to talk with Garamoth. Setting up the Guild of Helpers' took much longer than I would have imagined and by the time I had joined all these neighbourhoods, I was ready to call it a day.

HC

Day 18 - Ages of Uru

Not a long day today. I finished off another marker set (number eight), which contained one very annoying marker under the wooden bridge in Ae'gura, that took several tries to get. Other than that, not much happened. So, I thought I would use this post to give a brief description of each of the Ages that can be linked to from Relto (I'm sure this stuff gets pretty confusing to the uninitiated).

Relto Bookshelf

Bevin		My home neighbourhood, including Bahro stone links to a high balcony and the classroom roof.
The Nexus		A central book suppository that acts as a commuter station of sorts. Contains personal, private, public and city links.
Ae'gura		Holds Bahro stone links to locations throughout D'ni, including the neighbourhoods of Ae'gura and Tokotah, as well as the Great Zero and the Great Shaft. Most of these locations are otherwise inaccessible.
The Cleft		A location in New Mexico where you first meet Zandi and your Yeesha Journey begins.
Gahreesen		Apparently a D'ni garrison that was also used to hold cruel games with captured Bahro.
Teledahn		This Age apparently began as a private gift to a rich D'ni merchant, but later came to be used to harvest the giant mushrooms and spores that reside here. Teledahn was rediscovered by Douglas Sharper who became very attached to the location and, as a game hunter, entralled by it's animals, especially a giant sea creature he dubbed "Shroomie".
Kadish Tolesa		Originally this Age belonged to the great wealthy D'ni, Kadish. As D'ni was falling he retreated to his vault to protect his treasures but died there remorseful. At some point in the future, Yeesha apparently discovers a way to travel back in time to save Kadish from his fate.
Eder Remo		An Age of steam vents, Eder Remo seemed to have been a refuge of sorts for the Bahro who built dwellings in a system of caves behind a waterfall.
Eder Gira		Initially linked to from Eder Remo, Eder Gira also seemed to serve as a hiding place for the Bahro. It is a garden age with steep rock faces that are covered with Bahro paintings.
Nagilahn		One of four pods, all of which are in different locations on the same planet. In each of the pods, a portal will open in the early morning. Each portal takes the explorer to a Bahro cave. Nagilahn is a tropical jungle that Sharper claims to have hunted in.
Dereno		Set in the far north, Dereno is a frozen lake where the sun never sets. However, the water below the ice is teaming with life.
Payiferen		Located in a more arid, desert like environment, there have still been reports of animals outside the pod. Payiferen is unique of the four pods in that you can see the mechanism that triggers the portal to appear.
Tetsonot		Apparently the final of the four pod Ages, Tetsonot appears to be located at the bottom of the sea, interfering with it's ability to be powered effectively which hampers any views of the outside.

Notice how the books are naturally divided into groups on the book shelf. The first three all link to places in D'ni (with two empty places for books to come, I suppose). Next is a book that links you to the surface. After that the five books of Yeesha's Journey and then the four pod books.

There are also two Ages that can only be linked two from a Bevin neighbourhood: Eder Tsogal and Eder Delin. Both these Ages are gardens and contain a single puzzle each that requires several explorers working in unison to solve.

Eder Tsogal	Eder Delin

One last note, I have discovered a group calling themselves the D'ni Network that have taken the responsibility of distributing information around the cavern. I have signed up for their news letter which comes straight to my KI. Here are some events coming up in the next week.

• Today: The Guild of Comedy presents Jeff Foxworthy and George Carlin. Foxworthy I've already missed (it was at 12:30 today) but I can catch George Carlin tonight at 18:30 KI time.


• Saturday @ 10:00: The Assembly of Guilds will be holding a town meeting.


• Tuesday: The Great Tree is declaring Tuesday, Black Out Day, where everyone is to turn everything black in protest of the DRC not sharing information with explorers. Sounds like fun.
  
• Wednesday @ 11:00, 17:00, 24:00: The D'ni Network will be having open houses.

Busy times.

HC

Day 17

For the past few days, I've been concentration on collecting markers, with a few side trips. It's turning out to be easier that I anticipated (it's easier than collecting the first 30 anyway). The ability to see the markers from a distance more than offsets that the KI cannot detect them.

One frustrating thing happened, though. I've been talking about my search for a new neighbourhood, but I don't think I mentioned that I deleted my Bevin book to my old neighbourhood, pretty much permanently cutting myself off from it. Marker set six and seven are set completely in Bevin. At first I simply used one of the many empty neighbourhoods but three of the markers can only be accessed from high locations that you can only get to through Bahro stones. When you use a Bahro stone, a page is added to the appropriate book so that you don't have to hunt down that Bahro stone again to access that location subsequent times. The two stones that link to Bevin are found in Gahreesen and Eder Gira. I had found them long ago and the pages were added to my Bevin book. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, I had deleted my Bevin book. I created a new Bevin (an easy process), and then went to get the Bahro stones which, fortunately, are easy to get to.

Marker On Bevin Balcony

I collected the final the final three Bevin markers but then made another unfortunate discovery - my Great Zero link has disappeared from my Nexus! It took some asking around to discover this, but it seems that this link is connected to the neighbourhood you belong to. The link will not appear until someone in your neighbourhood has collected the first fifteen markers and upload them at the Great Zero Antichamber. The only way I had of setting my KI to detect the original set of markers was to reset my Ae'gura linking book, which means I would lose not only all the progress I had made calibrating the Great Zero, but also the dozen or so Bahro stone links to various locations in Ae'gura. Fortunately, after describing my plight at the Guild of Greeters, someone volunteered to help me out. Corbin created a fresh avatar while I made my new neighbourhood public. He then linked to it and I made him a member of HCIsland's Bevin. He then was kind enough (or bored enough) to collect the required 15 markers and upload them, thus updating my Nexus with the Great Zero link. Thank you, Corbin!

Here are the other highlights from the past few days.

• Meet a nice explorer named D'Annika during marker set three. It turned out we were going after the same set of markers, so we kept running into each other. One of the markers from this set required a tricky drop off a cliff and two people certainly helped in lining up the jump. It seems like D'Annika and I have about the same schedule because we keep seeming to be in the Cavern at the same time.


• Revisited the various pod Ages and found that the power had finally died in all but Tetsonot. It was night in most places so the power wouldn't reset for any length of time. The next convenient day start isn't until Sunday afternoon, so it may be a bit before I restore power. One interesting thing I noticed is that in Payiferen, the a grunting sound that is emitted from one of the sound buttons I had left on was still going despite the power now being off. I could get the power on briefly, but found I couldn't turn the sound off. Perhaps the sound was the actual animal now? Perhaps I had caught something? This is definitely worth further investigation, but I have to come back during the day.


• A new Bahro stone appeared yesterday. It is near the cliff by the Tokotah Alley, just down the stairs from the central Ae'gura courtyard. I only discovered it because of the crowd of people that had gathered there. The stone linked to a small resting place in the Great Shaft - a huge verticle chamber connecting D'ni to the surface. There was the journal of Dr. Watson, the original founder of the DRC, dated around 2004/05. He writes of his depression over the failure of the restoration. He talks of the death of Phil (as mentioned in Sharper's journal) and his own, final, decision to follow Yeesha's path. The journal strongly hints that you should jump into the Great Shaft (which for me caused the game to crash >:( ). This used to be part of the To D'ni expansion pack of the solo game. You used to be able to catch a glimpse of the bottom of the Great Shaft (which is featured prominently in Myst V). I should try again sometime to make sure things are not any different.

The Great Shaft

• Things are changing. The central games room in Gahreesen seems to be coming to life - at least the control panels for the room are now lighting up, though interaction with them is impossible. Also, I swear, there is a pillar in Eder Gira that wasn't there before!


• I used the time while Corbin was collecting markers for me to put a welcome message in my new neighbourhood. Who knows, maybe some folks will join. I also signed up for a regular news report of Cavern happenings through my KI. I need to get more in the loop of what is going on.

HC

Day 16

Started today by contacting an explorer name Starman. I saw a post by him on the message board announcing that he was shopping for a new neighbourhood for much the same reasons as I was. I sent him a PM asking how he was doing with his search and that I was in much the same situation as him. I then went neighbourhood serving but didn't get any further than Jazz's Bevin. Jazz had a group of people there and they were going to do a run through Delin and Eder Tsogal - perfect! I had a great time with them, nice people. They were kind enough to extend me an offer to join, which was tempting but I wanted to hear back from Starman first. Anyway, with the help of this neighbourhood, I finally picked up the Tsogal well piece.

Members of Jazz's Bevin Working On Tsogal

After that, it was getting close to the Tetsonot portal. When I arrived there I found the power was still on from the last time, though still pulsing in an out. The portal soon arrived, though I was disappointed to find it about 10 minutes ahead of my calculations - 9:58 EST. Oh well, I guess I can't depend upon the accuracy of the map.

Tetsonot Portal

With that done, and after admiring my well with it's three complete donuts, I decided to go through the first Marker Mission. Now, I have to be honest, I don't have the patience to search around endlessly for these markers. Thankfully I was able to get the approximate locations of all the markers from the folks at Uru Obsession. These markers are a little different than the first set. They are white, instead of red, and don't cause the KI to begin beeping. However, they can be seen from any distance away rather than only appearing when you get close. But, you don't collect them by pressing a button on your KI. You collect them by physically walking, running, or jumping through them. The first set were all readily accessible, but I can't shake the feeling that some are going to require some crazy leaps.

Relto Well With First Three Layers Complete

Anyway, after collecting the twelve mission 1 markers, I uploaded them and downloaded the second mission. After that I decided to call it a night.

HC

Day 15

I started the session by checking out each of the pod Ages: Payiferen, Dereno & Negilahn. I was very pleased to see the power was on in all three despite it being four days (over six pod cycles) since the last time I visited. It was night in Payiferen and Nagilahn (I'm completely convinced the sun never sets in Dereno) and I began playing with the buttons by the windows and discovered that they were lights.

Payiferen Lights

Very cool! In Dereno you can see the lights only in the lower, left window (below the ice), but in Negilahn I couldn't see the lights at all. I noticed that I was only about 13 tahvo from when I guessing the Negilahn sunrise was. It's possible that it may be too bright out to see the lights. I don't know, but I'll try again at another time. I left each of the pods with the lights one and one of the sound buttons turned on as well (I made it the third button in each just for consistency).

But the best was yet to come. I went to the museum in Ae'gura and discovered that there was a new, massive, sculpture in the center of the stair case. Impressive, but better still was a fourth linking book had joined the other three. This one went to an Age called Tetsonot.

New Museum Sculpture

Obviously, I linked there right away, but inside it was almost pitch black with a dim read, throbbing light above the Nexus linking book. I fumbled my way to the back of the pod where the power switch was in the other Ages and noticed that the floor was flooded. I managed to find the switch. The lights pulsed in and out, and none too brightly, but there was enough light to see the D'ni number six on the floor - this is pod six. Unfortunately, there was not enough light to see anything but a red glow out the pod windows. However, I got the distinct impression that I was situated under water. A check of the pod map seemed to confirm this hypothesis. I decided to link out and do the calculations to figure out when the portal will be coming here. By my calculations, the next convenient portal will be there between 16:20 and 17:01 pod time, which is approximately between 10:10pm to 10:15pm EST, Sunday. You know where I'll be.

HC

Day 14

I had some issues accessing the Cavern which caused me to miss the time I wanted to try switching on all the power switches in the three pod Ages. I was about 10 minutes late. I went in and switched them all on anyway and then left. I'll check back in a couple of days and see if they are still on.

After that, I decided to hunt for the last elusive marker for the Great Zero. I was a little more methodical in my search of Ae'gura this time and finally succeeded, finding it just past the Hall of Kings, on the right side at the top of the stairs. This allowed me access to Rezero, the machine that actually calibrates the Great Zero. There I can pick one of the fourteen marker missions. I picked one, but decided to shift gears again to another activity.

The Great Zero

I decided to finish Yeesha's Journey by travelling to the journey door in each of the four Ages (an easy task now) and return the four totems to the Bahro. This caused a fissure to open in my Relto which linked me back to the Cleft. There I entered the four symbols from the Bahro cave and activated Yeesha's final message. She went on about how I saw through to the right path. She also talked of how she has surpassed all the D'ni in power writing Ages they could only dream of. Then it was time for rewards: a Cleft linking book, a Relto page, and a journey shirt. Also to be found with a bit of search was a pair of goggles and Zandi's Hawaiian shirt for my wardrobe. After a climb out of the Cleft, I caught a sight of the Bahro returning. I'm sure we will be seeing these guys again, sometime.

A Bahro

I decided to conclude my day with a little neighbourhood surfing. I've pretty much decided to dump my old neighbourhood. I met some nice people and gave a group of them help with their Delen - a place I already had the puzzle piece for. Recall that this Age (along with Tsogal - which I've still to do) requires seven journey cloths to be pressed in a correct order in a limited period of time. Communication and teamwork are the key. The thing was, we were short a couple of people leading to two of us (including me) working two cloths. Folks were close to the point of giving up, but in the end we got it. Soon after that, I called it a night.

HC

Day 13

As planned, I went to each of the pod Ages in the dead of night. Power at Payiferen was completely dead and couldn't be restarted. At Nagilahn, the power was on, which surprised me. Both Payiferen and Nagilahn were in the night as predicted. At Dereno it was day (perhaps it's too far north). The power was off, but stayed on when I started it. I waited about four and a half minutes and then started screwing around with the four sound buttons. The third button killed the power and it could no longer be turned on.

Also, a closer look at the map showed that scattered around in the oceans of this planet are a lot of points, each numbered 1 to 4 (hmm ... four buttons). Twenty-five of these points are also marked with two, small, concentric, circles. Of the twenty five circle points, four are marked with a 1, eleven with 2, five with 3, and five with 4. I am not sure what to make of this.

After the pod experiment, I decided to finish off Teledahn and Gahreesen. From Teledahn I linked to Sharper's office in Ae'gura and read through his journal. A lot of it is devoted to his observations of the wild life on Teledahn (in particular a large whale-like creature he names Shroomie). It turns out he's quite the game hunter. His observations of the DRC are interesting. When Dr. Watson first ordered the Cavern and Ages had to be prepared for visitors from the surface, Sharper was initially reluctant. Upon the first arrivals, though, he began to warm to them. Especially, someone named Phil who seemed to have made contact with Yeesha. Sharper makes repeated reference to tensions within the DRC as to the direction of the restoration and that a war is brewing between the heads of the DRC and the followers of Yeesha. He was particularly angered when Phil mysteriously disappeared and was pronounced dead from an accident, resulting in a temporary closing of the cavern. But Zandi (the DRC member we first meet near the Cleft) continues to bring in more travellers, much to the anger of Watson and company, and much to the delight of Sharper. There is more here, but I wasn't taking it down. I should really go back, or perhaps see if I can dig up a transcript.

Relto Totems - Note Well Pieces In Background

Anyway, finishing off Teledahn involves opening the hatch which leads you to a jail cell that you have to figure how to open. The walkway afterwards has an annoying ramp that needs to be run into to make it go down. I'm going to leave the details after that blank, other than there is a Bahro stone that takes you to a prison cell in Gahreesen, allowing to finish off that Age. The final journey cloths in Gahreesen are easy to find, but the journey door is a little tricky. Hint: It requires a daring jump.

Soon I had all the four of the totems of Yeesha's quest (and the four lower stones for the well), but I didn't do the few things left to finish this thing off. Instead I started checking out the various neighbourhoods. I checked out one called The Meeting Place where about a dozen people or so were chatting away (a couple by voice). Soon the question went out, "Who wants to do Delin?" Well, needless to say I was all over that and thankfully, this time there wasn't too many people and we were able to pull it off. As expected, the door linked to another Bahro cave where a half well piece was waiting. This piece fitted above the Yeesha pieces and below the Pod pieces.

Eder Tsogal - Delin's Sister Age

I took a brake for a bit, but after dinner I returned to the Cavern and my neighbourhood surfing. One that caught my eye was the Metaphyisical Bevin that had a message on the viewer that gave me a giggle, but unfortunately there was no one there. I checked out a few more but then came to Calibrating the Zero Bevin. There was a rather unique individual (green hair - purple eyes - and named Calibrating the Zero) who's stated mission was to have as many people as possible calibrate the Great Zero as he is convinced this will bring something big from the DRC. Okay, a little strange, but interesting. We talked about the Great Zero for a bit (there's actually fourteen marker missions!), added him to my buddy list (the first one), and agreed to join his neighbourhood. Apparently this involves deleting my Bevin book in Relto, then travelling to his Relto and linking through his book. He suggested meeting in the Greeter's Guild in five minutes, but he never showed and remained off line. I spent some time collecting GZMs (I've got four more to go to finish mission two) but then the game started getting really laggy because of the volume of people - perhaps the reason CZ never returned. I left him a message and logged off.

By the way, I decided I wasn't going to try and catch the sunrises at Dereno and Nagilahn - I didn't see the point anymore, but I had a new idea. I wanted to try and switch the power switches on while each of the pods were in their mornings as see if the power would stay on that way. I then noticed that what I called my zero time (the time a portal would appear at the planets first meridian line) is right around the time I wanted to try the power switches. I found that interesting so I thought I would try turning on all the power switches right at that time. Unfortunately, all my socializing got me forgetting to check the time until it was too late. A time that looks good to give this another shot is 7:46PM on Tuesday.

HC

Day 12

I had an interesting time with the power switches last night. As planned, I went to Payiferen trying to catch the sunrise and found the power off and the switch only powering things up for a few seconds. I then went to Nagilahn only about fifteen minutes before the portal was due to arrive there finding the power still on. In Dereno, the power was off but would stay on after I turned it on. In both Nagilahn and Dereno, it was day. When I returned to Payiferen, I found the power would still only stay on for a few seconds, but that it was clearly getting light outside. Light was just beginning to come in through holes in the front window. I noted the time and it was just a little after the Nagilahn portal was due. Then I tried the power again and noticed this time that it would stay on, though I only stayed another minute because I wanted to see what was going on in the other ages. In Dereno the power had gone back off. I turned it on and waited ten more minutes while it stayed on, then zipped over to Nagilahn to find the power still on.

Nagilahn

So, what do I have? The power in Payiferen only stayed on after the sun came up (solar power?). The portal in Nagilahn is timed very closely to the Payiferen sunrise, but that seems likely a coincidence to me. I used the map to determine when the sun would rise in Nagilahn and Dereno. Then, assuming equal hours of daylight and night (which may not be true), I extrapolated when the likely times for the sunsets would be, and discovered that I have yet to visit either Nagilahn or Dereno in the dead of what should be their night (I was beginning to think they were day all time). I'm judging a good time to try to catch them at night would be around 3:45PM EST, Sunday. I would then like to take a shot at catching the Nagilahn and Dereno sunrises (6:29PM EST & 7:43PM EST respectively, also on Sunday). There is still the issue of the seven blue buttons found in each pod (four by the power switch and then one in front of each of three windows). Do the four by the power switch have anything to do with the four spirals that trigger to portal in Payiferen? Why does the power sometimes staying on for very long times (more than a pod cycle)?

I want to do some more observing before making more guesses.

Anyway, I caught the Payiferen portal later that evening. I also checked in at my neighbourhood to find that no one has been there (other than me) for almost two weeks. I don't have much business in the portals tonight (Saturday), so perhaps I'll be doing some socializing.

HC

Day 11 - D'ni Numbers

I should have known I was trying to bang a square peg into a round hole.

I was so proud of my "solution" to the pod puzzle from the last day that I posted a link to it on the Uru Live message board. One reply forced me to realize I was off track.

There is a clue near where you found the books.

So, last night I went back to the museum in Ae'gura, where the pod books are kept, and went to the table that I blew right by when I was previously here. Why didn't I look at what was on the table? Because, having completed the solo game a couple of times already and being the cocky bastard that I am, I figured I already had read the journal that was there. Well that journal is gone, and instead there is this map.

Museum Pod Map - English Text Added By Me

So after looking around for a ball peen hammer to smack myself with, I recalculated the pod times. It's hard to see the D'ni numbers on this reduced map, but they correspond to the numbers found inside each pod (which appear to be scattered around randomly). More over, the vertical lines are also numbered from 1 to 13 (thirteen time zones). The portal period is 65 tahvo, so that comes out to 5 tahvo per time zone. It's a small matter to measure the distances between pods and extrapolate the time differences in portal appearance.

I've decided to make my zero time zone line one, and I measure all my times now from there. I've now constructed a spreadsheet that converts pod time to KI time and back and plotted on the information I had about each pod. I'll keep at my observations with the power switches, which I still haven't figured out. The spreadsheet also calculates portal times into the future, so I don't have to check the viewer at the Greeter's Guild anymore.

Other than getting the map, last night turned into a bit of a bust because of server issues at Cyan, which left the game hanging most time after using a linking book. Hopefully, everything will be working well tonight because, by my calculations, the Payiferen portal will open at around 10:37 EST. I would also like to take a shot at catching the Payiferen sunrise. Last day I felt I had just missed it so I'm going to begin popping into Payiferen about half an hour earlier than when I was there before, likely starting around 9:00 EST. I'll also do what may likely be my last check at my Bevin neighbourhood. If no one has been there for the past couple of days it will have been about two weeks since anyone was there besides me, so I may start shopping for a new neighbourhood. Plus, I have Teledahn, Gahreesen, Eder Tsogal and Delin to finish off, not to mention collecting GZMs. Still lots to do that have nothing to do with pods.

D'ni numbers have come up in my posts a number of times already, so I thought I would finish today's entry with a explanation of the D'ni number system. This was first introduced in Riven (the second Myst game) where they gave you a game to allow you to figure all this out. Since then, D'ni numbers have appeared in most, if not all, the games.

The D'ni have a base five number system (ours is base ten - I'll get to how this works in a sec), which means that, not counting zero, they have only four symbols to represent numbers.

one	two	three	four

So how do they represent five? Well what do we do when we run out of symbols for our numbers? We have a base ten system, so after nine (9) we have no new symbols to represent numbers. We represent ten by putting a one in the tens' place value and a zero in the ones' place value (10). The D'ni system does the same, but theirs is base five so the next place value is the fives'. Also, instead of starting a new column to indicate the next place value, they rotate the symbol 90 degrees clockwise. So to put a one in the fives' place value, they just turn the one symbol.

five

To represent eleven in base ten, we put one in the tens' place value and one in the ones' (11), twelve is one in the tens' and two in the ones' (12). The D'ni do the same thing but in base five: six is one in the fives' and one in the ones', seven is one in the fives' and two in the ones'. Here are the next two D'ni numbers.

six	seven

This can continue for a while. We represent nineteen as one ten and nine ones (19), the D'ni would write three fives and four ones.

nineteen

Twenty-five is a little unique. Our next place value is the hundreds' (10X10), so in base five, the next place value would be the twenty-fives' (5X5). So twenty-five, in base five, would be represented by putting one in the twenty-fives' place value. The thing is, this rotating method doesn't work anymore because if we rotate the one symbol another 90 degrees, we are back to something that looks exactly like one again. The logical thing to do would be to put a second box to the left of the first box and call that the twenty-fives'. This would require a zero to be put in the ones' place value. The D'ni symbol for zero is the box with a dot in the middle. This can be done, but placing an X in the box has become a special symbol for twenty five too (I am not sure where this first appeared). After twenty-five though, we have to go with the second box option. Here are a few more numbers.

twenty-five	also twenty-five	twenty-six	twenty-seven

I know this all seems confusing, but that is really only because we are so used to the base ten system that we think it's the only game in town. Computers use base 2 (binary) and base 16 (hexadecimal) extensively. The ancient Babylonians (the first to invent this whole place value idea) had a base sixty number system! If you think that sounds archaic, we still have it in our clocks!

You may have noticed the script on the map as well. Myst-Revelations gives us the means to deceiver that, but I'll leave that for another day.

HC

Day 10

I may be on to something.

Last night I did my observations in each of the pods and happened into Payiferen shortly after sunrise. Four rays of light were streaming through the holes in the front window, and it was clear that, given more time, those four rays of light would shine upon four spiral plates that were on the floor.

Payiferen

I happened to be about an hour away from when the Payiferen portal time (I didn't wait because it was past my bed time - yes, I am a retentive nerd), so I suspect in an hour the light beams would be shining on the floor plates. It struck me that Payiferen could be the key to the other portals. Perhaps the light beams on the plates is the trigger that sets off the other portals. Now, the other portals don't open at the same time as the Payiferen portal, but perhaps it takes time for the signal from Payiferen to reach the other portals. Perhaps the numbers on the floor indicate a distance from some fixed point?

I began to look at the times in a different way then I did before.

	pod number difference from Payiferen (n)	time to portal after Payiferen portal (t in tahvo)	t/n
Nagilahn	5	57.5	11.5
Dereno	12	62.6	5.2

Not too encouraging, but it is certainly possible that one or both of the other pods are more than one portal cycle away. Adding one portal cycle to the travel times would still give you the same portal times. If I add one pod cycle (65 tahvo) to Dereno, we get this.

	pod number difference from Payiferen (n)	time to portal after Payiferen portal (t in tahvo)	t/n
Nagilahn	5	57.5	11.5
Dereno	12	127.6	10.6

These are very close! In fact, within the accuracy of the numbers I'm working with, this is almost bang on. A simple way to measure the accuracy of a measurement is to count the number of digits. Most of the numbers I'm working with have only two digits of accuracy. For example: The message at the Greeter's Guild told me that the Payiferen portal is 2.4 tahvo behind Dereno - two digits. For that mater, the pod numbers (13, 18, 25) are all two digits of accuracy. If they really represent distances, 13 could really mean anything between 12.5 and 13.5.

If you start factoring in the inaccuracies in the measurements, high school level error analysis will yield a range for t/n (time delay from the Payiferen portal per pod number) of between 9.5 and 12.1 tahvo, with the values around the middle (10.8) being the most likely.

All of this is obviously highly speculative. The test will come when we have access to another pod (there's obviously a fourth one coming).

HC

PS: It's possible this range could be much smaller. If we take the pod numbers to be 100% accurate (and they may be) and only consider the inaccuracies that exist within portal times (which certainly are not 100% accurate), the range comes down to only 10.4 to 11.1 tahvo per pod number.

I'll post how all this stuff is calculate if I get asked to.

Day 9

A very short day today.

I started by doing some experimenting with the power switches that was very inconclusive.

Payiferen: When I got there the power was on (I'm not sure if I left it on last time I was here or not). I switched it off, then on again, waited 10 minutes and the power still hadn't switched off. Got bored and left. I also made note of the time, the holes in the second level window, the spiral plates on the floor (which are absent in the other two pods), and that it was day.

Nagilahn: Power switch stayed on for only 5 seconds. Noted the crack in the wall, the time, and that it was day.

Dereno: Switched on the power and waited ten minutes before I was bored and left. The power never turned off. Noted time, that there were cracks in the upper windows, and that it was day. Left with the power still on.

View From Lower Window In Dereno

I've been spending some time trying to stitch together a connection between the pod numbers and the cycle of portal appearances, and am really coming to the conclusion that there isn't one. The issue is that from pod 13 (Payiferen) to pod 18 (Nagilahn) - a difference of 5 - there is a 13 hours and 54 minutes in portal times; from pod 18 to pod 25 (Dereno) - a difference of 7 - there is only 1 hour and 14 minutes between pod times; and then from pod 25 to pod 13 - a difference of 13 (wrapping around and assuming 25 is the highest number) - there is a time difference just 35 minutes. Mathematically, a linear relationship cannot be fit to this.

I'll keep up with my observations. I still have to grab the Payiferen portal sometime.

HC

Day 8

Okay, the numbers in the pods have nothing to do with time.

I went back to the Greeter's Guild and there was a new message on the viewer.

Hint for Payiferen: It is 2.4 tahvo behind Dereno.

This began to tweak my memory cells from when I played Path of the Shell where time plays a big issue in finishing the game. In fact, the game lets you play with a D'ni clock which allows you to figure out their units for time. So I dug out my old Path of the Shell notes where I found out that one tahvo is about 14.5 minutes - it is made up of 625 (25*25) prorahn.

So that comes out to be about 35 minutes after Dereno. At this point I was beginning to wonder if I was missing something that would have allowed me to work out these times for myself, so I hit the message boards to discover that these times were worked out by simply having a lot of people spend a lot of time in the pods until the portal appeared. Well, I sure as hell wasn't prepared to do that!

What I kinda want to do, though, is put together a chart of events for the three pods (portal appearance, sunrise, sunset). It seems that the periods (length of day) in each pod is the same (about 15 hours and 43 minutes - 65 tahvo). I should be able to use this to come up with a more systematic method than simply standing in a pod for hours. The length of day being the same seems to indicate that these pods are just different locations on the same planet. Are the hours of daylight the same? Could this help me nail down their locations on the planet? There's a fourth pod coming - what information will it provide?

Anyway, I wanted to catch the 20:29 portal in Negilahn which left me with some time to kill. I went to my neighbourhood Bevin but I've been the only person there now for a week. If I don't here from anyone soon, I'm going to be shopping for a new neighbourhood.

Another thing on the viewer at the Greeter's Guild was a list of Bevins that had Delin books. I had no idea what this meant so I figured I would go to one and find out. I went to Jazz's Bevin, and talked to Jazz (the only person there at the time). She seemed nice, perhaps I'll come back but I really wanted to find out about this Delin book. It turns out that some neighbourhoods (a minority) get a book to Delin instead of a Eder Tsogal book. I asked permission to check it out. It was lusher than Tsogal (sorry no pics - next time), but the size and the puzzle you had to solve was exactly the same.

Teledahn

But I put thoughts of Tsogal and Delin aside for now and decided I was going to make a little more progress in Yeesha's quest, so I went back to Relto and entered Teledahn, the last of that group of four Ages. Like the other Ages of its kind, I've done this a couple of times before. I'm going to be short on details, but again powering everything up is important (solar power this time) and I'll give the hint that there is something you need to climb into for a ride. The ride takes you to a power distribution room which allows you to open a hatch and drain a lake that you see right at the start of the Age. There is also an elevator which takes you to the office of Douglas Sharper, a key DRC character. In fact, if you can find it, there is a book which links you to Douglas Sharper's office in Ae'gura (the large public neighbourhood in the Cavern). I began leafing through Sharper's journal there and realized that a bunch of recent entries have been made. Unfortunately, I was getting close to Negilahn's portal time, so I had to put the journal aside for later.

Bahro Cave

The Negilahn portal appeared right on schedule, which took me to the Bahro cave where I snagged the next well piece. One thing I did notice while there though. The last time I was in Negilahn and pulled the power switch, it only lasted for a few seconds. This time, it last much longer. I'm not sure what this means, but I think I'm going to start going there at different times and start recording the length of time the power lasts for.

HC

PS: The lastest update from Cyan seems to have cured my issues running Uru on my computer. After deleting the game and redownloading it, it works fine. Full steam ahead!

Day 7

Nothing like reading the manual.

Having played the solo game before, I didn't pay much attention to the journals and manuals that are scattered around Uru, but I was frustrated enough with figuring out everything that the KI can do for me, that I finally went to the manual that can be found in the classroom at Bevin.

Thank goodness I did. At Bevin is a viewer that can be viewed by everyone in my neighbourhood (19 people as it turns out). The manual gave instructions on how to post stuff using your KI. I posted a picture, my nick, and a bit of my background with an invitation to contact me if you want to begin going through Uru as a team.

Folks chilling at the Greeter's Bevin

We'll see what comes of it. If nothing, I'll start shopping for a new neighbourhood. I then went to the Greeter's Bevin which had about a dozen people in it (not as busy as last time). I took a screen shot of the portal times and then inquired if there was anyone interested in taking a shot at opening the door of Eder Tsogal? A traveler named Todoni volunteered right up. It took a bit of waiting, but we soon had the eight people we needed.

The puzzle requires one to stand by the journey door (that was me) and then the seven others to go to one of seven journey cloths. When they press the cloth, a symbol appears on the door and it doesn't take much to figure out that the symbols are the numbers 1 to 7. You then press the door and the symbols begin to repeat themselves in the random pattern. The door watcher calls out the numbers in order and, one at a time, they lock in their journey cloths to open the door. Sounds simple, no? Well, no. Soon there was about two dozen people in the Age to watch and when that many show up you have to shout (with /shout) to be heard, which meant some of the commands got lost. As we were closing in on organizing ourselves well enough, real life was calling me back so I had to go. Oh well, maybe next time.


While off line I looked over the portal times I had gotten a screen shot of and decided to take a shot at the 14:17 in Dereno. I'm glad I did. At first, nothing appeared to be happening at the appointed time, until I threw the power switch and a silvery portal appeared before me. Walking into it I linked to a Bahro cave (pretty much the same as the one you go to in Yeesha's quest). There was a spiral symbol on the wall, which I pressed, that caused a stone to disappear. I jumped into the Star Field under the cave and linked back to Relto. In Relto I had a new piece added to my well.

My well at Relto

The two lower stones have been there for a bit, but I didn't notice exactly what I did to earn them - perhaps completing the Cleft and the first batch of GZMs. But, clearly each level requires four stones, and it seems obvious that two of the upper ones are going to be found in Negilahn and Payiferen. I will obviously be going back to those two. The thing is, I still don't know what the scattered blue buttons in those Ages are for, other than they play various animal sounds. There are also the numbers on the floor which I will post here.

Payiferen - 13	Negilahn - 18	Dereno - 25?

I'll explain the D'ni number system in another post sometime, but I'm fairly confident of the first two. I just don't know what the X means - maybe 25 (their number system is base 5). I suspected the numbers had something to do with the length of time between the portals opening until I noticed that the period for Negilahn and Dereno are exactly the same.

Obviously, some more thought or information is required. At last, I feel like I'm mysting!

HC

PS: Perhaps the numbers refer to the start times. If Dereno is 25, it is 7 D'ni hours after Negilahn. Dereno schedule is 74 minutes after Negilahn making a D'ni hour 74/7 or about 10.57 minutes. If this is true then Payiferen is 5 D'ni hours ahead of Negilahn, which is about 53 minutes. Doubt I have it but it is worth a shot.